Networking services have become increasingly important in today's society. In certain architectures, service providers may seek to offer multicast services for their end users. ‘Multicast’ refers to the delivery of information to a group of destinations simultaneously using the most efficient strategy. Delivery of messages over each link of the network happens only once: creating copies only when the links to the destinations split.
Data transmission over cellular networks has traditionally been unicast. Recently, some companies have been advocating the use of multicast for transmitting content to given end user devices: either over a separate infrastructure or over a dedicated spectrum using the same infrastructure. This requires a custom client on the phone, custom applications, etc. and, hence, faces challenges in adoption.
Thus, the ability to develop a system or a protocol that offers an effective coordination for multicasting activities (without hindering system speeds, requiring unnecessary infrastructure, increasing overhead, or unduly taxing processing capabilities of network components) provides a significant challenge to network designers, component manufacturers, service providers, and system administrators alike.